Tig Notaro joked about her breast cancer diagnosis during an epic set at Largo -- and killed

Standup comedian Tig Notaro took the stage Friday night at Largo as part of her farewell to Los Angeles as she prepares to move to New York to begin work on Amy Schumer's new show. But that wasn't all she was announcing: she revealed that following a string of personal tragedies (a terrible bout of pneumonia, her mother's death, and a breakup), she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In both breasts. After starting her set with jokes about her diagnosis (“You have a lump.” “No, doctor, that’s my breast.”), she said she should maybe do some of her more light-hearted material, but someone yelled out: “NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE.” She was killing it. I wasn't there (Kira Hesser was), but her fellow performers -- Louis C.K., Bill Burr, and Ed Helms -- posted raves on Twitter. Notaro had prefaced her set by saying that "everything is going to be okay," which only goes to show: awesome people are awesome, and cancer sucks. (via Splitsider, Uproxx)

A lot of fans said that Bill Hicks got a lot better after he got diagnosed. I don’t know if that’s true, I was a late-comer to his bandwagon; but maybe there is something about being fearless or at least having perspective on your fear that something like a more apparent view on your own mortality can give you.

As a fan of standup and someone who had watched a lot of interviews and docs about the art one of the things you hear about is that the artists are overcoming a lot of fears just in regards to performance and then in regards of how to be honest with strangers.